Thief deals homeless artist cruel blow

His main creative tool a computer, but it's stolen

Posted: Saturday, April 24, 2010

By Merritt Melancon

Van Beville's art starts with a photograph of a flower or a tree or a bird, but then he uses a computer to mottle some parts of the image and intensifies the color in other parts until it becomes a decidedly unnatural portrait.

It's a technique that Beville has been perfecting for months, and he had recently started getting a lot of attention for the unique style - but then someone stole the tool that turns his creative vision into art. A thief snatched his laptop computer from the back of his van.

"I knew this was going to happen," Beville said. "Stuff like this happens when you don't have a place to lock up your stuff. I knew it would happen; I was just hoping I'd be off the street before it did. ... I've been working really hard to make this work, to get to a point where I have a place to stay."

For Beville, who has been living in his van since February, the art on his computer was the best thing he had going for him, he said. He recently sold about 15 pieces of his work and had booked art shows at Mama's Boy, The Grit and Five Star Day Cafe.

"What made this so awful was that just a few days before, he came in beaming about his different shows he had set up," said Bob Sleppy, director of Nu i's Space, where Beville volunteers and often works on his art. "That sort of energy is contagious, you know. So when he came and said he'd lost everything, it was devastating."

Now Beville is trying to track down the laptop - a blue 15-inch Toshiba Satellite - and his camera, so he can retrieve the months of work stored on the computer and start producing new art.

Someone took the computer about 2 p.m. Tuesday while Beville was doing laundry inside the Sparrow's Nest ministry on Prince Avenue. He filed a police report but the laptop still is missing.

The loss was twofold, Beville said: He lost a means of earning money until he finds full-time job, and he lost months of work and family photos. He currently has hard copies of only about half a dozen pieces of his artwork.

"The thing is, he's in the same position as the people who took his stuff," said Will Kiser, who worked with Beville at Nu i's Space. "He's out there doing what he's supposed to do to get back on his feet, and the people who are in the same position but not doing the right things took it from him. It's a laptop, but for him it means so much more than it would for some of us who are more fortunate. This is a whole different level."

Beville lost his job installing high-definition televisions and entertainment systems in St. Augustine, Fla., last May and moved to Athens in June. He lived here during the 1990s and still had a lot of friends in town, so it seemed like a good place to try to start over, he said.

But he couldn't find work and eventually ran out of money.

Beville, who is a trained graphic designer, started playing with digital photos on his computer as he waited for calls from potential employers. No one has called back so far, but he's not giving up.

He's been volunteering at Nu i's Space, working with the Athens Area Homeless Shelter's Faces of the Homeless public speaking program and volunteering with the Athens Human Rights Festival. He stays busy; he's just not getting paid.

"We have that library there with tables for people to work at," Kiser said. "He was one of the people who hung out and worked there. ... He is one of the only people who was there who would just get up and come over and help me move stuff, if he saw something we needed help with. Here he is, this guy who has just been through some awful circumstances, and he is volunteering his time."